Troy, its funny you bring up the "anerythristic" thing... To be honest, I have not even found "anerythristic" to be a real term... This is because eryrhrophores are considered to be xanthophores... This makes animals that lack yellow, orange, and/or red pteridine pigmentation axanthic...



I would say that there is a lot of confusion about these terms due to poor documentation and web searches bringing up anything really definitive other than reptile sites. However, I do believe that we can make intelligent presumptions based on the little information we do have.



In regards to Anerythrism, we first have to look up the word Erythrism which basically means "Unusual red pigmentation, as of hair or plumage." (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/erythrism , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythrism). Therefore, the adding of "An-", meaning "not; without" (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/an-) to Eyrthrism would denote the opposite definition meaning "without red pigmentation".



Almost the same type of word play is used with Axanthism but instead of adding "An-", we are merely adding "A-" which means exactly the same thing (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/a-). The word Xanthism basically means "a term that may be applied to birds, fish and other animals whose colouration is unusually yellow through an excess of yellow pigment, or possibly a loss of darker pigments that allows yellow pigment to be unusually dominant. It is often associated with the lack of usual red pigmentation and its replacement with yellow" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthism , http://www.thefreedictionary.com/xanthism). Axanthism obviously would be the opposite meaning "lacking yellow pigmentation" and possibly red as well depending on whose terminology you want to adhere to.



To be continued...
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Troy Rexroth

Rextiles

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